Ecological Systems Theory: Informational Article on the film "The Chumscrubber" -Brandon Dellario LMSW LASAC

    The film The Chumscrubber is a story of highly privileged teenagers and their families living in the suburbs of Los Angeles. This story is a strong example of how viewing a person within their environment holds undeniable relevance.

The primary assumption of ecological theory is that the person and environment are inseparable and must be considered jointly.  It forms a unitary system where the person and environment shape each other. The main character, Dean, has a friend named Jack who he finds dead from apparent suicide. Dean was not very well adjusted to begin with. Jack was his only friend. At school Dean gets picked on and harassed about Jack’s suicide. Jack was a drug dealer. Dean is threatened by bullies to steal Jack’s drugs, or they will kill his younger brother.

      At home, Dean has a fairly stable family compared to other parents and adults in the community, though his father psychoanalyzes him, and his mother has a hard time keeping the home afloat. The other adults in the neighborhood are phony to each other and their children. There are also numerous parental problems presenting themselves as dysfunction.  These families display inbalance in the parental disconnection, indecisiveness, ambivalence and sometimes overzealous behaviors.

     The children are stressed by their parents, but given zero discipline or structure, and no open lines of communication. If they want something from an adult they simply state that it is, “for school,” and they are free to do as they will. When bullies end up kidnapping a child, all adults ignore what is going on because they choose not to believe it is true of their children. This fuels the bullies criminal energies. This relationship between the bullies and the parents requires an element of reciprocal causality. Reciprocal Causation happens when one bad decision precludes another in it's effect.

Reciprocal Causality is the participation of an individual in their environment as to the “. . . interactive, cumulative effects”(Green, pg. 271) … of adapting to and creating the conditions in which they live.

Dean has trouble trusting people which is heightened when he is tricked by the lead bully's girlfriend repeatedly. He has trouble trusting his father who is continually publishing Dean’s problems in pop-psychology books and giving him medications. He has a decent relationship with his mom, yet she flip-flops back and forth between being his friend and his mother.  He is otherwise isolated.

However, Dean is a self-controlled person who isn’t easily swayed. He refuses to become a part of the bully’s games. He determines his own environment by listening to his family and not reacting to the threats of the bullies. He chooses not to live in fear. Then finally confronts the bullies at the film's end, and talks the kidnapped boy out of killing them.

Dean shapes a life for himself in the way of cynicism and opposition to a world lacking any definition of reality. He retains his principles in the midst of savage artificialism. These strong values of Dean’s are actually shaped by the toxic environment he adapts himself to by establishing a boundary and working against the grain. This environment actually aided to develop this character's character.  The symbol of a zombie warrior in an apocolyptic world (the Chumscrubber video game character), seems to be a metaphor for Dean's survivalist behavior in a socially toxic suburban environment.

Green, R., Human Behavior Theory and Social Work Practice. (coursepack)

Kotlowitz, A. (1991), THERE ARE NO CHILDREN HERE. New York, New York: Doubleday